This blog is about one man's struggles to live a life consistent with the truth of Scripture.

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What is “wholisticsexuality“? It is the belief, the conviction that we cannot divorce or separate our sexuality from everything we are, think, say and do. We are a “whole” person, and our sexuality is an integral part of the whole. So, before you start thinking that I have lost my mind or gone off the deep-end, sit back, relax and buckle up, because I am going to tell you things you may have never thought about before.

In the beginning…
If we really go back to the beginning, we must go back to creation, to Genesis chapters 1-3. In the beginning God… After God created all the rest of the universe, He set out to make His finest creation, mankind, in His own image, male and female. Then He told our first parents to “Be fruitful and multiply“. We are the products of that multiplication, so let’s go back to the beginning of YOU…

So, just how “male” or “female” are you? If I said “totally“, that wouldn’t really explain it. Every person who has lived or ever will live, with the exception of our first parents, began life as two microscopic cells which merged to become one. Your mother provided an egg, and your father provided a much smaller, but equally-important sperm. Neither cell is capable of making life on its own. They must have each other, or they both die. When that sperm penetrated that egg, your life began, not as a genderless blob, but fully gendered, with all the genetic information necessary to build your body. Each of those parent cells contained half of your DNA package. The “normal” human genetic package contains 46 chromosones, 23 from your mother, and 23 from your father. That sperm determined your basic gender, male or female. Every cell in your body that has ever been produced, and ever will be produced, is either male or female, and that includes your blood.

The two gender-determining chromosomes are X and Y. Natal females are genetically XX, and natal males are XY. All eggs contain an X chromosome, because females carry only X chromosomes. Sperm, on the other hand, carries either an X or a Y chromosome, because males have both. If a Y-coded sperm fertilizes the egg, the result is a boy. If an X-coded sperm fertilizes the egg, the result is a girl. This is a bare-bones basics of genetics, because I am neither a doctor nor a genetics-specialist.

When you were born, you weren’t just a “baby“. You weren’t born with the “potential” to “become” a boy or a girl, you were either a BOYor you were a GIRL. You were born “fully-equipped” for your male or female reproductive role, even if those parts were small and not fully-developed. Baby girls are born with all the eggs they can ever use in a lifetime, and their ovaries are already producing estrogen. Baby boys are born with the ability to achieve an erection, and their testicles are already producing testosterone.

I am a participant in the Human Genome Project, through the VA Million Veteran Program, and when I enrolled, they simply took a vial of blood, which will not only be used to look at my genetic-makeup, but also to see how genetics affects diseases progressions and treatment outcomes.

I am not going to delve into all the possibilities when a person inherits extra genes.

Physical gender…
Our genitals are the visible evidence of our basic genetic-makeup, not the determiners thereof. Hence, I have male sexual equipment, penis, testicles, etc, because I am genetically-male. I have also fathered four children.

Brain “wiring”…
Why do you think the way you do? Is it because you were raised as either a boy or as a girl? Nurture only explains part of why you think the way you do. A lot more of it has to do with how your brain is “wired“. Male and female brains are different, which is why men will never truly understand women. God didn’t design us to be alike. He designed the two genders to be complimentary, not identical.

Sometimes brain “wiring” gets mixed up, so that a male gets a “female” brain or a female gets a “male” brain. Those people feel like they are the opposite sex of what their genitals reveal, and some go on to get themselves “replumbed” into what they truly believe they are. I am NOT here to judge them, but I do accept trans-gender people as they are.

Hormones…
Men and women have different dominant hormones, testosterone for men, estrogen for women, and even though the amounts of these hormones which are circulating in our bodies seem miniscule, their affects are huge. My first wife was unable to take birth-control pills because the excess hormones caused her to have wild mood-swings, and even though millions of women have taken those same pills with good effects, her response was extreme. Men also have estrogen in very small amounts, but if there is too much estrogen in a man’s body, it had feminizing affects, including loss of libido and the appearance of “man-boobs“. Women also have testosterone in very small amounts, and if there is too much testosterone in a woman’s body, it has masculizing affects, including excess body-hair growth. If a woman has too little testosterone, her libido or sex-drive may be low or missing completely.

Body shape…
Have you ever wondered why eight-year-old twins, a boy and a girl, can look SO much alike that you can’t tell them apart unless they take their underwear off, and yet by the time they are sixteen years old, they look totally different? That, my friends, is the miracle of puberty. The classic male body-shape is a “V“, broad at the shoulders, and tapering down to narrow hips. The shoulders are the widest part of a man’s body, and the hips are the widest part of a woman’s body. The classic female body-shape is an hourglass, wider at the chest, narrow at the waist, and broader at the hips. Have you ever heard a woman being described as having “child-bearing hips“? During a normal vaginal delivery, the baby must pass through its mother’s pelvis, so female pelvises are quite a bit wider and shallower than the average male pelvis, which is deep, compact and heavy. Some women get cheated in the pelvis department, and their pelvis isn’t wide enough to accomodate normal vaginal delivery. I used to have a niece by marriage who was that way, and had to have all of her babies delivered surgically. It also didn’t help that her babies were over ten pounds. I have a wider-than-normal pelvis. Go figure…

Stature…
Why are men generally taller than women? Could it be that men are built to a different set of “specs“, or even a different “blueprint” than women? We already know that men and women have a different “typical” body-shape, but how about their respective statures? Indeed, men and women ARE built to different “specs” with very different “blueprints“. Men are built on a 7 X 3 “platform“, and women are built on a 7 X 2 “platform“. The first number refers to the number of “head-heights” a person is tall, and the second number refers to the number of “head-widths” their shoulders are wide. A man is generally seven “head-heights” tall, and his shoulders are three “head-widths” wide. A woman is generally seven “head-heights” tall, and her shoulders are two “head-widths” wide. A woman’s head is also smaller than a man’s head which helps account for the difference in proportions.

For me, since I have a ten-inch-tall by six-inch-wide head, I am seventy-one inches tall, and my shoulders are eighteen inches wide.

Have you ever seen someone whose body-proportions seem to be all “off” for their apparent gender? I used to know someone who was a male-to-female transexual, and no matter how hard she tried, she didn’t have a feminine body because her proportions were all “off“.

Muscles…
Why do women have to work twice as hard to build half as much muscle as a man? Could genetics have anything to do with it? We know that some men are more “genetically-gifted” than others, but are male genes more conducive to having more muscle and being stronger? Besides have a different bone-structure, men have another advantage, and it is between their legs, their testicles. Testosterone, the dominant male hormone, is required in abundance to build strong muscles. That is why men with low testosterone levels have great difficulty losing weight and building muscle. I do not advocate taking anabolic steriods (testosterone) for the purpose of building big muscles, but testosterone-replacement therapy does have a place in helping men regain their “manliness“.

That is why Mr. America will never be a woman.

Voice…
Have you ever wondered why “Papa sings bass and mama sings tenor”? Have you heard or seen the Vienna Boy’s Choir? Have you wondered where the girls are, because there sure are some high voices in that group? Welcome to the world of pre-pubertal boys. Puberty does a lot of things to a boy’s body, and one of those is causing his voice to start becoming lower, and lower, and lower… Some boys only make it down to tenor. There are some wonderful operatic tenors, and then there are the Five Irish Tenors. All I can say is WOW!!! Those guys have incredible voices.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is guys like me. The bottom just about dropped out as our voices were getting lower. I give the bottom octave on a piano a run for its money, and one choir director I sang under called me a “basso-profundo“. There has been a lot of bickering on some of the nudist blogs and forums about social nudity and sexuality because they don’t understand how completely our sexuality is interwoven with our humanity. No one could ever confuse me for a woman, even if all I did was say “Hello“… on the phone.

When I was in the hospital in 2007 after my eye-stroke, I was on the stroke-wing, just in case. Besides a list of tests as long as my arm, all stroke-patients were assessed by a physical-therapist and a speech-pathologist. I offered to take the physical-therapist on a tour of the facility (chuckle-chuckle). When the speech-pathologist came in, she quickly realized that I have a very deep voice, so she asked if my “stroke” had affected my voice. I told her, “No, I sing to the LOW-pipes” (chuckle-chuckle).

Have you ever heard a grown woman who sounded like a little girl? Most girl’s voices also change as they grow up, but not as dramatically as boy’s voices do. Those changes, and training, are what give us women who can sing everything from low-tenor to super-soprano.

The pitch of a person’s voice isn’t all that changes with puberty. The timbre, or tonal-quality of their voice changes also.

Hair…
Why do most men have a lot of body hair and most women have very little? Why do some women have a lot of body hair and some men are almost hairless? The process of growing body hair usually begins when a youngster enters puberty, and is one of the signs of puberty. Puberty in girls is “staged” by their breast development and how much pubic hair they have. Puberty in boys is “staged” by how much pubic hair they have, and how large their penis and testicles are. It is also controlled by genetics. Generally the only body hair most women have is under their armspits and in their pubic area. Many men have hair from their face all the way to their toes.

How many bearded women have you met? How many bearded men do you know? Facial-hair is rare for women, but the ability to grow facial-hair is almost universal in men. The ability to grow facial-hair is a masculine trait.

How often do you see a naturally-bald-headed woman? How often do you see a bald-headed man? Natural baldness is very rare in women, but very common in men. Have you heard the term “male-pattern baldness“? Baldness in men tends to run in families, and may go for several generations. My dad was the only nearly-bald male in his family, and I inherited his father’s full head of hair. Mine is turning colors (gray) rather than turning loose. Grandpa’s hair was snow-white when he died.

Face…
Even our faces are different. Men look like “men“, and women look like “women“, and if you have an Adam’s Apple, you were born “male“.

Hands…
Is you ring-finger noticeably longer than your index-finger? If so, you were probably born “male“. If your index-finger is longer than your ring-finger, you were probably born “female“.

Feet…
How many women do you know with size-13 feet? How many men do you know with size-13 feet? I wear size-13 shoes, but I haven’t met any women who wear size-13 shoes… My dad wore size-14 shoes…

Conclusions…
These are just a few of the ways in which our gender, our sexuality, are displayed in unmistakable ways. Our “sexuality” is NOT “just” our genitals and what we do with them, and the notion that a person can “turn-off” their sexuality in certain situations is patently-false. For the nudists who believe this notion, do your own research, because you aren’t going to take my word for it anyway. Just because a man doesn’t get an instant erection when he is nude in mixed company doesn’t make him any less a man. He may have good control over his erection responses, but if he gets overloaded with sexually-suggestive inputs, his penis may rise to the occasion anyway.

Forensics specialists can determine the birth-gender of a person by looking at the configuration of their bare skeleton, and determine their approximate age from the condition of their skeleton. We don’t simply “dress the part” or “act the part“. We ARE the part.

A blog dedicated to the thoughts, opinions, ideas and random madness of Edward W. Raby, Sr. - Pastor, Theologian, Philosopher, Writer, Bodybuilder and Football Fan. "Yes, the dog is foaming at the mouth. Don't worry, He just had pint of beer and is trying to scare you." This is a Theology Pub so drink your theology responsibly or have a designated driver to get you home as theology can be as intoxicating as alcohol.

A blog reaching out to victims of abuse and others in need, providing insight about abuse, hope for the future, and guidance to see THE LIGHT that lead Secret Angel out of the darkness of her own abusive situation and helped her to not only survive but to overcome.